Piney Woods Homeschool

Ray's Arithmetic was one of the first books I bought when I decided to homeschoool.  Really, it's a set of books, and I bought the reprinted box set on ebay, determined to give my kids a good start in math using time-tested materials.  The box set comes with a teacher guide from Ruth Beechick, and that's the guide I used to get an idea how the books should work.  Immediately I ran into difficulties, though, because the prescribed sequence didn't match my child's needs.  I think I was a member of a Yahoo group that discussed Ray's specifically or maybe a broader category that included Ray's, and that's where I found out about the original teacher guide for Ray's .  That changed everything! If you're planning to use Ray's Arithmetic to teach math, sit down and read that teacher guide.  You'll see more clearly how the books are meant to work together.  In fact, you'll see that you don't even need to use a book for quite awhile, sin...

AmblesideOnline uses Signs and Seasons in Years 7-9.  The official schedules for those years include broad ranges of the book for each term.  It's up to each family to decide how to spread that work across the term.  Here's one way of doing that.  There's no magic to this, so consider this just an example.  You could divide up the work vastly differently and have it still be as good or better as this arrangement. Each column in the table is one week.  In each week, you'll have one passage to read (except where that week has dashes) and two field activities.  Generally, you want to keep a record of the field activities in your field notebook or journal. Sample Signs and Seasons Schedule

"It is better that children should receive a few vital ideas that their souls may grow than a great deal of indefinite teaching." Charlotte Mason, Home Education , p. 346 Much of what passes for Sunday school curriculum involves "a great deal of indefinite teaching" and few, if any, "vital ideas."  We want souls to grow, but we have a vague idea of how to achieve that goal.   Our first mission must be to connect the child with the Bible text.  This is the most direct way for the Holy Spirit to speak to the child.  For very young children, this may involve retelling the Bible text in simplified form.  Somewhat older children may be ready for Bible text mixed with some retelling so as not to get bogged down in the passages for which they may not be mature enough or which may be too long for them right now.  Older children can hear or read the text itself and connect with it with very little intervention from the teacher. In a Charlotte Mason...

I'm reading The Tao of Pooh , in which Benjamin Hoff uses the Winnie the Pooh stories to exemplify philosophical principles.  And I'm reading Charlotte Mason's second volume, Parents and Children , which is a collection of articles she wrote for the parents' magazine her organization published.  Tonight my Tao of Pooh reading came from chapter 4, "Cottleston Pie."  One of the points of this chapter is that dealing with things As They Are is better than pretending things are Something They Are Not.  Tigger comes up a lot.  Hoff reminds us of Rabbit's plan to Unbounce Tigger.  The plan failed, and one of Tigger's positive traits became obvious: he doesn't get lost.  Tigger's bounciness distracted everyone, maybe even himself, from noticing his talents.  And when Rabbit finally wins and forces Tigger to promise not to bounce, Tigger's whole character changes, and not for the better.  Everyone misses the old cheery, bouncy Tigger, even if the...

  This is Part 6 of 6.  Find the other parts here. Less than perfect *is* success.  Focus on what happened, not what didn’t happen.  Today, this week, this term, this year, what did you and your students accomplish?  Where did you grow?  What new experiences did you have?  How did you improve?  Appreciate the beauty in what you *are* doing.  It’s easy to feel inadequate and worry that you’re failing.  And of course we have to consider where we need to improve, but first we have to seriously look at where we’re doing well.  So your Year 1 student isn’t narrating beautifully even when you read a paragraph at a time.  But what *is* she doing that she wasn’t able to do at the beginning of the year?  Where can you see growth or forward progress? Where are you seeing small glimpses of success?  Maybe your Year 4 student isn’t adding Latin or taking to Plutarch or the original Shakespeare plays, but is he enjoying one ...

This is Part 5 of 6.  Find the other parts  here. When you make your plans, plan to delegate.  The first place to delegate is to your kids.  Pass responsibilities to your kids as they can handle them.  This looks different for each child and each home; it will even look different from week to week sometimes.  Don’t fear for their failure.  You want to be wise about adding responsibility, but you also need to let them own the responsibility even if it turns out to be more imperfect than you would like.  Plan for boundaries to help teach them as they take on these new roles.  They need regular checkpoints where they can see the consequences of their success or failure.  This helps them learn to manage their own work.  But within those checkpoints, give them freedom.  Some of them will pick up on what they need to do sooner than others.  I have one child who starts his week’s work on Sunday evening and tries to come ...

This is Part 4 of 6.  Find the other parts  here. The map should not rule us.  Plan, but hold plans loosely.  AmblesideOnline’s booklists, schedules, and other plans are such a help!  They give us a place to start.  Sometimes we can work with those plans with very few changes, and other times we’ll find we have to make big adjustments.  When you’re ready to plan, plan for what you think you can realistically accomplish plus a little more.  Give yourself room to grow into the plans.  Looking at the schedule for a new term can seem overwhelming--all those books!  All those new types of work!  And we weren’t getting everything done *last* term!  Don’t panic!  Take that work, and organize it into whatever template works for you so you can see how it might actually play out in your home with your unique situation. Adjust your expectations down if you need to, but don’t adjust them all the way down to a level that feels c...